After months of anticipation, we are now finally on the verge of the Galaxy S II launch in the U.S. Yesterday's events now have us strongly convinced that the first variant of the Galaxy S II, most likely on Sprint (as the recently approved by the FCC Epic Touch 4G, if you remember), will be launching Friday, September 9th, 2011.

Clue #1

First, today we received a tip from a trusted source inside Sprint, putting the 9/9/11 date on the radar with a very high probability.

Samsung announced today that it will be launching four new Galaxy smartphones together with a completely revamped naming strategy for these and future devices.

This "simplified" system of naming smartphones will group Samsung's upcoming devices into five distinct classes from entry-level phones ("Y") all the way to premium models ("S"). Each class will be represented by a different letter and additional indicators (such as "Pro", "Plus", and "LTE") will be used to identify the "specific functionality" of that device.

While not entirely unexpected, Verizon and Samsung have pulled a bit of a ninja act with the LTE Tab 10.1. We haven't heard a word about it lately, yet an official announcement has just landed in our inbox announcing it will go on sale in two days. The ubertablet will run from $530 for the 16GB model to $630 for the 32GB model, a $30 premium over the WiFi version. As an added bonus, Tab 10.1 purchasers will get a free $25 credit for the Samsung Media Hub.

Just over a month ago, Samsung sent out free Galaxy S II's to a few of the developers behind CyangonMod with instructions to get CM working on the uberphone as soon as possible. The first real sign of progress came a few days ago when they released a video showing CM7 running on an SGSII along with a message that nightlies would be following soon. Well, we're happy to report the first official build is now available to download and install.

The all-around awesome Galaxy S II has made debut all over the world to the tune of major success, but nary a peep (aside from the occasional rumor) has been heard about any versions of the phone bound for the US. Today, however, we have a new detail in the form of two blurry shots of the Sprint variant (dubbed the Within), and... well, let's just say anyone who's seen pictures of the GSII before knows what to expect, because not a lot is different here.

P3Droid of MyDroidWorld has scored an early (debug) Gingerbread build for the Samsung Fascinate, and it's apparently quite polished. So far P3 and Justin (of AndIRC) are the only two to have laid hands on the build, but the issues they have found are that Tetris force closes, Google Maps isn't pre-installed, and some market apps don't show. Otherwise, they say it's a very solid build. P3 has provided a quick (37 second) video preview:

I've been thinking about writing this editorial for some time now. And today, with the announcement of Panasonic's upcoming Toughbook Android tablet, I finally decided to go for it. The point this article is trying to make may not be abundantly clear in the title, so let me see if I can get it across as a question: Is it just me, or are there a suspiciously large number of companies in or planning to enter the Android tablet market?

CrunchGear is reporting that the Italian site HDblog has received exclusive details on Samsung's least-publicized new tablet product: the Galaxy Tab Seven (aka, the Galaxy Tab 2). The Seven will be the successor to the wildly unpopular Galaxy Tab, which debuted last fall to almost universally poor reviews (though our own Aaron Gingrich thoroughly enjoyed it). The Galaxy Tab was the first major-manufacturer Android tablet, and it seems based on the new tablet's specifications, Samsung learned a lot from the Tab's less-than-successful run.

Android's hottest new tablet - the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 - is now available for pre-order at Best Buy. As we've heard before, New Yorkers have an especially sweet deal: Best Buy will be opening up sales today at noon at their Union Square store, and the first 200 purchasers will also get a free leather pouch. For the rest of us, the Tab is slated to go on sale on June 17.

Could Samsung have learned a lesson from the Galaxy S Froyo update shenanigans? The company will be shipping their hottest new device, the Galaxy Tab 10.1, with Honeycomb 3.1 rather than 3.0. No shipping with out-of-date software here - and pretty speedy turnaround, given that Honeycomb 3.1 probably hasn't been available to manufacturers for too long. Then again, the 10.1 doesn't have TouchWiz yet and won't until after release, so there was no custom UI to slow the update.